Giants clash as L'pool face Barca

Saturday, 16th December 2006 8:55pm

To me the most outstanding match from yesterday's UEFA Champions League draw is the match between 2005 champions Liverpool and current holders Barcelona. Barcelona was always going to be the team to avoid for the teams that finished top but somebody was going to draw them
and in this case it was Liverpool.

The first leg of these fixtures is going to be played on February 20 or 21 and by that time Barcelona should have most of its stars back from injury including Lionel Messi and possibly Samuel E'too and that should make it even more difficult for Liverpool.

I think Barcelona will prove to be too powerful to Liverpool even though they have to play the second leg at Anfield.

The second interesting tie for me is the one that pits Bayern Munich against Real Madrid.
Bayern did well in the group stages where their main challenge came from Inter Milan but I think we could be seeing the last of them in the competition this season in these two legs.

I see the Arsenal/PSV Eindhoven, AC Milan/Celtic and Valencia/Inter Milan as ties that can easily go either way although Valencia could easily be overcome by Inter if they have not regained their form by then.

For the rest of the matches, Chelsea should see off Porto and I don't think Lille will cause Manchester United too many problems this time around whilst Lyon should be good enough to dismiss Roma.